Thousands of people line up Saturday to enter a hurricane shelter at Germain Arena in Estero, Florida. The line is more than a mile long. Residents throughout Florida are seeking last minute shelter in advance of Hurricane Irma.

Hundreds of family members checked into the emergency shelter Friday morning at Oak Hammock Middle School in Fort Myers a few days ahead of Hurricane Irma. After seeing the storm shift west, many of the families search for safety.
Andrea Melendez/news-press.com

Amy Oshier shares a report from a RaceTrac gas station located at Colonial and Winkler Blvd in Fort Myers where she reports there is gas available at every pump as of 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 7, 2017.
Amy Oshier/Naples Daily News

Customers were informed the truck they were waiting for was not coming with water after some had waited more than two hours in line at the Publix on Six Mile and Colonia Blvd. in Fort Myers.
Andrea Melendez/news-press.com

The scene at Lowe's Home Improvement store in Naples on Tuesday, Sept. 5, 2017 in advance of category 5 storm Hurricane Irma. This was the last of the plywood at the store until a new shipment arrives.

Hurricane Irma, upgraded to a powerful Category 4 storm, barrels towards the Caribbean and the southern United States with residents in its path preparing for the worst. Video provided by Reuters
Newslook

A: We’re very well prepared. We’ve been working on it for a week. We’ve been far out in front. We’ve developed our plans starting last Saturday. We started making recommendations for people to leave Tuesday. And I think that gave a lot of people a good head start. Fortunately, we prepared for either a direct or an adjacent event of a Category 5 size.

Q: The shelters you guys had opened today: Has it been enough for the influx of people looking for shelter?

A: No. No. In fact, we’re still working on them. I know Director (of the Bureau of Emergency Services Dan) Summers has been working all day along with the superintendent (of schools) and our people, trying to make sure that they’re open but they’re also staffed, so we can make sure that everybody’s got their needs taken care of.

Q: We were driving around today, trying to actually move to a shelter to report from, and we weren’t able to get into a shelter. Do you guys have any estimate of how many people aren’t able to get refuge or shelter before the storm?

A: That I don’t know. I do know what we’re doing is: When we have a shelter that fills up, we direct the people looking for shelter to another shelter. So we just don’t tell them, ‘This is closed.’ Now, the dilemma is, when they all get filled, and we still haven’t gotten to open any more shelters.

Q: We went to like four different elementary schools before finally they said to go try Germain. And by the time we were 10 minutes, driving toward Germain, Germain filled up. And the whole time we knew we could come back here. We saw cars that didn’t have that (comfort). Any clue what’s going to happen to those people?

A: The only thing I can tell you, is I’ve been watching what’s going on at Germain. And they have a lot of space, but it’s taking longer than they would like to get people through the system there. But right now, I think we must be triple the number of shelters that would have normally been opened and planned.

Q: Are those shelters equipped to handle Category 4we? Those ad-hoc ones?

A: I don’t know. One of the things that we’re going to have to look at very closely for planning from this day forward is: ‘What do we do if we have a Category 5 Hurricane?’

Q: Germain Arena, do you think that’s Category 4 or 5 (shelter)?

A: I don’t know. But I will tell you that there are not a lot of Category 5 rated buildings that I’m aware of in Collier County. This is one. Our helicopter bunker is another but it’s only a bunker for the helicopter. So, we have got to plan where we grow and build from here to make sure that we can handle a Category 5 storm.

Q: It sounds to me like it could be pretty widespread devastation, people being caught in transit or not being able to find shelter and having to go back to their homes, which aren’t equipped to handle the hurricane. Is that accurate?

A: Not from what I’ve seen on the road. I’ve seen a lot of traffic dwindle to nothing. I’ve been out the last three nights and the roads have been empty at least by the coast. You know, I don’t know where they are. We are all residents of the state of Florida, we all should know this is hurricane season.

We all need to have a hurricane plan. Even though we haven’t had one in a long time. Part of the dilemma is the growth since (Hurricane) Charley, even right here in Collier County, the fact that people are not aware of what the impacts of hurricanes really are.

Q: The people last minute scrambling today, is it kind of their fault for waiting?

A: No, no. I wouldn’t say that at all. All we look for is to get people to think about, make a decision as to where you’re going to go and how you’re going to safeguard yourself.

That’s exactly why, on Tuesday, we put out information that said, ‘Listen, in order for you to make a self-assessment as to whether you should stay or go, check these eight things.’ That’s when we were hoping that we would help you make the decision, ‘You know, maybe I shouldn’t stay here, maybe I should go shelter somewhere.’

Part of our problem here, and you guys know this, we went from a storm affecting predominantly a coast to the largest storm on record, encompassing the entire peninsula of Florida. That has never occurred before. There are going to be things we’re going to find out that we didn’t know before. Even with as good of plans as we’ve got — and we’ve got what I’d believe to be the best plans — but we’re going to learn things we need to do differently.

How many people are there in Collier County? 350,000. Right now, I believe our shelters have 16,000 people. How do we accomplish safeguarding 350,000 people when there are not physically enough buildings here?

Q: That’s kind of interesting because it sounds like part of this is like a growth management issue. If Collier County had built more upward instead of outward, there would be more strong downtown buildings to put people in. Hotels that have been built in Miami, or potentially high rises, could be secured and made into bunkers when they were built.

A: A lot of (Golden Gate) Estates doesn’t have that urban configuration. But I believe that we probably should look at that in the future. When Miami-Dade revised all of their codes, it came out of a devastating event.

Q: Sounds like it could change the way a city is built, more high density, more concentrations of people.

A: Well, you’re getting into areas that are very testy, and knowing that from my 25 years here. How do you make sure everybody is safe and building the community that everybody wants to live in? But again, I’m telling you that we will all, when we review this, I’m sure there will be new recommendations for a lot of things.

Q: But one thing it sounds like you’re saying is clear is that the sprawl, the sheer influx of people, the sprawl that’s happened, you know, looks like it’s raising some red flags.

A: I would say the growth of our county, since I came here was 76,000 people. It would be a lot easier to manage 76,000 people than it is 350,000 people.

Q: Got it. One of our colleagues is out in Immokalee, and shelters were checking IDs of people as they entered, is that true?

A: I already answered one of your guy’s questions yesterday. We’re not checking immigration status. The Red Cross as I understand it has a simple sign-in sheet to keep families together if you’re not coming in together but no more than that.

Q: Deputies aren’t interested in that?

A: No. All we’re interested in is sheltering people as best we can.

Q: When people are getting ready to leave are they going to be checking the neighborhoods that they send them back into before they release them or are they just saying, ‘The surge has passed, the storm has passed, you can go seek your homes there?’

A: We’re going to put out a specific plan on that with somewhat of an agenda and we’re going to distribute it to all the shelters and put it to the media because we want people to know what it’s going to take. Because you’re right, we’ve got to go check the community. If you just think about how we have to operate.

As soon as the winds die down to about 45 (mph) we can start getting people out. We’ll have to start cutting through roads. I’ve been through this before, it will take some time to make an assessment for safety countywide. But look at the mandatory evacuation areas, they were evacuated because they were looking at specific problems and we’re going to need to make sure as quickly as we can whether that problem is gone or not. If it is as simple as water, that’s easy.

You can go and say, ‘OK the water is down.’ If there’s 6 feet of water we’re going to have to do something else. But I will tell you something else, that we are going to get people back to their neighborhoods and houses as quickly as we can.

Q: But in that plan are you going to check first the neighborhoods and houses before you send them out?

A: Oh yes, you have to because of downed trees and downed power lines.